Looks like local political pundits will have to adjust their predictions for another candidate: Dr. Evil!

But of course his lair is in Rhode Island. Hasn’t that been obvious all along?

His entry into the Congressional game is definitely going to mix things up when we lose one of our two congressional seats in 2020. At least my five year old already knows all of the words to our soon-to-be-new national anthem.

City Schools of Decatur parent Pascha Thomas claims her daughter, known by the initials N.T. in public documents, was sexually assaulted last year by a male classmate in an Oakhurst Elementary School girls’ restroom. Thomas said her 5-year-old daughter complained of vaginal pain the evening of Nov. 16, 2017. When Thomas asked more, the girl said she was leaving a restroom stall when a little boy in her class came in, pinned her against the stall, and groped her genitals with his hands. She said she tried to get away and called for help, but no one came.

When Thomas reported the assault to school officials the next morning, they responded with “deliberate indifference” toward the assault and the victim, according to the complaint. Despite Thomas’ efforts to ensure justice for her daughter over the following weeks, she said, the school failed to conduct a meaningful investigation, discipline the alleged assailant, remove the child from N.T.’s class or ensure he would not use the girl’s restroom again, or offer any assurance of protection or psychological counseling for N.T.

At a meeting in December, the school informed Thomas the boy identified as “gender fluid” and was allowed to use the girls’ restroom per a districtwide policy opening restrooms and locker rooms to students based on their gender identity.

As the corresponding video notes, Thomas says the school district didn’t stop at “deliberate indifference,” but actually called the state agency charged with investigating child abuse. That agency paid the family a visit as and investigated the Thomas, herself.

Another point of emphasis is how little involvement parents had it the development and implementation of this policy. How many Rhode Island parents, do you think, know that our state’s approach to the transgender issue is to assume that government employees are on (at least) an equal footing with parents when raising children and, by the high school level, should be tasked with identifying transgender feelings and helping students hide them from their parents?

For the Providence Journal, Jim Hummel has an article and video report on T.F. Green’s minimum charge for short-term parking and requirement for ride-sharing drivers (from, e.g., Uber and Lyft) to pick up in that lot:

Taking the statements of everybody in the report at face value, there are certainly two sides to the story. The airport has to operate on its own revenue, and ride-sharing is eating into that revenue, so the money has to come from somewhere.

That said, accommodations could surely be found so that ride-sharing drivers could pick up closer to the door and under shelter. The fee for pickups is a matter of negotiation, but convenience is a matter of protectionism.

Moreover, these are questions that we’re going to have to figure out how to answer, because technology is going to keep disrupting old arrangements like exclusive access for a single taxi company.

If by some chance you haven’t seen the video below, by all means watch it. Here’s the quick summary by David French:

… CBS talked to three different families in three very different financial circumstances — a single mom in North Carolina who makes less than $40,000 per year, a married couple in Rhode Island with no kids who make $150,000 per year, and California parents with three kids who make more than $300,000. Each family gets a break – which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s closely followed the details of the tax plan. But two of the families thought their taxes would be higher.

Procedurally, we’ve seen a lot of comparisons between the GOP’s tax cut and the passage of ObamaCare, but the direction is entirely different, thanks to the mainstream media’s converse activism in both cases. Some parts of ObamaCare proved popular, but they were well advertised. The surprises were the things that folks were told would not happen, like losing plans and doctors that they liked.

With the tax cut, the surprise will be that most people will actually see a decrease in their taxes. If the plan delivers on stronger economic growth, as well, public opinion could not just improve, but flip.